Don’t look

I promise that I will not look at the price of gold or silver all day.

I wonder if I can make it through an entire day.

I might be a gold and silver price addict.

It has been a part of my collecting and professional life for so long that it is only by accident that a day passes without my checking out the price of bullion.

I won’t claim that I can give it up.

I acquired the habit when I was a paperboy delivering the morning paper.

Some days in those days I checked the price even before I delivered the papers, but it was 1968 when I traded my afternoon route for one in the morning and things were really happening with silver.

I could see silver coins disappearing right before my eyes week to week.

I began 1968 still having to give silver coins in change to my customers because I did not have the money to keep every silver coin I encountered. I had to be selective.

By the end of 1968 keeping every silver coin I encountered was no financial sweat at all.

I was also sorry that I had not taken money out of my college savings to keep all of the silver coins I received that year.

But I didn’t.

What I did keep was my addiction to following the price daily.

Gold came later.

Gold was a boring $35 an ounce until Aug. 15, 1971, unless, of course, I wanted to follow the London market, which I did from time to time, but even then, the price did not vary by enough to make daily checks interesting.

Look at gold and silver now.

They are fluctuating and I am addicted to watching the price movements on a daily basis.

But not today.

Today it will be different.

Really.

Truly.

Ah ….

Buzz blogger Dave Harper is winner of the 2014 Numismatic Literary Guild Award for Best Blog and is editor of the weekly newspaper “Numismatic News.”

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